Windows Mobile 7 early build hands-on review, not compatible with old apps

Eldar Murtazin, Russian mobile phone godfather and the man behind the very well respected Mobile-review.com, who always seem to get their hands first on the latest mobile phones, has done it again, and managed to have a few minutes with an early build of Windows Mobile 7, running on an as yet unreleased device, and has been doing some tweeting about it.

He notes that the OS has been built from scratch and that none of the old Windows Mobile 6.X apps worked.

The UI was more complicated than that of the ZuneHD, and features much horizontal movement and â€œadditional info by clicksâ€. Calling a great step forward for Windows Mobile, he still felt the UI owned much to the iPhone or Android 3.1/3.2(?).

The UI still however features familiar elements such as soft keys, click and hold and bears some resemblance to leaks from 2007.

Of course, being an early build, it was devoid of much of the features that would make it an interesting OS.Â Eldar was not sure the software was yet ready for release, but was still sure it would be shown of at Mobile World Congress, at the very least behind closed doors.

At WMPoweruser.com we are sure that the most important part of Windows Mobile 7 are the services that would surround it like the Zune music store, and as such it is too early to draw any conclusion from the early look into the next generation of Windows Mobile. Everything is also of course in the domain of rumour,so may not be accurate or subject to change in the future. We can certainly say we can not wait for Mobile World Congress to find out more about the latest and greatest on the topic.

See the full twitter conversation, which we carefully trimmed from irrelevant bits, after the break.